Runpod
vs
Vast.ai
Both offer per-second billing, serverless endpoints and independently hosted GPUs. Vast.ai adds interruptible bidding and a wider GPU catalog.
What's good about each
- Deploy affordable GPUs in under a minute
- Scale across 30+ regions worldwide
- SOC 2 Type II certified, 99.9% uptime SLA
- Flexible billing: pay by the second, no commitments
- Built-in deployments, autoscaling & monitoring
- Budget cards to Blackwell, including the RTX PRO 6000 and B200
- On-demand, interruptible and reserved rentals
- SOC 2 Type II certified, with vetted datacenter hosts in Secure Cloud
- Host reliability ratings and GPU performance benchmarks
- REST API, CLI, Python SDK and coding agent plugins
Price comparison
Closest matching configuration on each side, monthly list price in USD.
| Service | Runpod | Vast.ai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small VM | $43.20 /mo 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | -- Not listed | |
| Medium VM | $86.40 /mo 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | -- Not listed | |
| Large VM | $172.80 /mo 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM (Compute-Optimized) | -- Not listed | |
| Block storage | $10.00 /mo 100 GB | -- Not listed | |
| Egress allowance | Free and unlimited | -- Not listed | |
| Egress | Free and unlimited | -- Not listed |
Heads up: Figures take each provider's closest plan to a common setup, and vary by region and usage. Hover a service for the reference configuration. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.
GPUs
Runpod offers 35 GPU models, while Vast.ai offers 65. Cheapest listed price per GPU per hour; GPUs both providers sell come first.
| GPU | Runpod | Vast.ai | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
H100
11 configs · 40 configs
|
$2.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | $1.73 /GPU/hr On-demand | 33% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
B300
3 configs · 4 configs
|
$7.89 /GPU/hr On-demand | $9.38 /GPU/hr On-demand | 16% cheaper on Runpod |
|
B200
3 configs · 8 configs
|
$6.79 /GPU/hr On-demand | $7.38 /GPU/hr On-demand | 8% cheaper on Runpod |
|
RTX PRO 6000
7 configs · 88 configs
|
$1.64 /GPU/hr On-demand | $1.00 /GPU/hr On-demand | 39% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
H200
6 configs · 42 configs
|
$3.59 /GPU/hr On-demand | $3.30 /GPU/hr On-demand | 8% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
RTX 5090
4 configs · 151 configs
|
$0.69 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.40 /GPU/hr On-demand | 43% cheaper on Vast.ai |
|
A100
12 configs · 52 configs
|
$1.00 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.43 /GPU/hr On-demand | 2.3x more expensive on Runpod |
|
RTX 4090
4 configs · 90 configs
|
$0.34 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.34 /GPU/hr On-demand | Within 5% |
|
L40S
6 configs · 4 configs
|
$0.79 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.80 /GPU/hr On-demand | Within 5% |
|
RTX 3090
7 configs · 85 configs
|
$0.22 /GPU/hr On-demand | $0.12 /GPU/hr On-demand | 47% cheaper on Vast.ai |
Runpod bills on-demand; Vast.ai bills on-demand, spot and reserved (1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 or 48 months). The line under each price names the billing type shown.
Services
Managed services each provider offers.
| Service | Runpod | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Block Storage | ||
| GPU-powered Servers | ||
| Managed Containers | ||
| Python Notebooks | ||
| Virtual Private Server (VPS) |
Company details
| Fact | Runpod | Vast.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2022 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | USA | USA |
| Locations | 32 | 10 |
| Example customers | Zillow, CivitAI, Wix, OpenAI, Perplexity, Cursor | IBM, Brave, Speechify, Cognition, Bosch |
| Website | www.runpod.io | vast.ai |
Alternatives to consider
Compare Runpod and Vast.ai against other cloud providers.
Our data for Runpod was last updated on Sept. 16, 2026, and for Vast.ai on Sept. 16, 2026.